Jesus’ Mission: Top Quotes AT A GLANCE. Last Updated 6th January 2021.
(The full quotes and sources of the quotes are below these)
- “I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.
… It is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise that person up on the last day.” (Jesus) - “His mission is to open God’s doors to all, to be the presence of God’s love” (Pope Francis)
- “My peace I give you” (Jesus)
- “That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (Jesus)
- “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Jesus)
- “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (Jesus)
- “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” (St John’s Gospel)
- “Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
- “Jesus came to make the vision of God for our world a reality.” (Fr Peter McVerry)
- “God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.… It is not mere improvement but transformation.” (CS Lewis)
- to show us a God “whose passion is compassion” (Fr Peter McVerry)
- “to unmask the illusion of power, to disarm the prince of darkness who rules the world, and to bring the divided human race to a new unity.” (Henri Nouwen)
- “to heal human nature and bring it back to its original purpose” (Carmelite priest)
- “I believe that Jesus came to tell us only one thing: who God is…. He knew God intimately as Son of God and he came to reveal that God to us.” (Fr Peter McVerry)
- “to share his identity with you and to tell you that you are the beloved sons and daughters of God. Just for a moment try to enter this enormous mystery, that you, like Jesus, are the beloved daughter or the beloved son of God. This is the truth.” (Henri Nouwen)
- “He sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be his very own and would have no ambition except to do good.” (St Paul)
- “That Jesus delivered his message is what counts—not the world’s reaction; and once proclaimed, that message can never be silenced, but will knock on men’s hearts to the last day.” (Romano Guardini)
Full Quotes, Further Quotes, and Sources of Quotes:
Jesus’ Mission
“I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.
Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me,
but that I should raise it up on the last day.
It is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him
should have eternal life,
and that I should raise that person up on the last day.”
— Jesus (John 6: 38-40, the New Jerusalem Bible translation)
“His mission is to open God’s doors to all, to be the presence of God’s love.”
— Pope Francis I, at his first ‘General Audience’, St Peter’s Square, March 27th 2013
“I leave you peace. My peace I give you.”
— Jesus
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”
— Jesus (Luke 4:18)
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
— Jesus (Matthew 20:28)
“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
— Jesus (John 15:11)
“After speaking in many places and varied ways through the prophets, God ‘last of all in these days has spoken to us by his Son’ (Heb 1:1-2). For he sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all people, so that he might dwell among them and tell them the innermost realities about God (cf. Jn 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent as ‘a human being to human beings’, ‘speaks the words of God’ (Jn 3:34), and completes the work of salvation which his Father gave him to do (cf. Jn 5:36; 17:4). To see Jesus is to see his Father (Jn 14:9). For this reason, Jesus perfected Revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making himself present and manifesting himself: through his words and deeds, his signs and wonders, but especially though his death and glorious Resurrection from the dead and finally his sending of the Spirit of truth”.
— Vatican II, 1965 (in the document Dei Verbum, as quoted by Pope John-Paul II in his Fides et Ratio encyclical, 1998)
“Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.”
— Gospel of John 3:16-17
“Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’s Passion.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, in his Encyclical Letter ‘Spe Salvi’ (39)
“Jesus came to make the vision of God for our world a reality.”
— Fr Peter McVerry, SJ, page 142 of his book ‘Jesus: Social Revolutionary?’, Veritas Publications, Dublin, 2008
“God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature… It is not mere improvement but transformation.”
— CS Lewis, in his book ‘Mere Christianity’ (in the chapter ‘Nice People or New Men’, page 178 of the 1997 edition by Fount Paperbacks, London)
“It was clear to the Jewish authorities that Jesus was threatening the very basis of their faith. He was undermining the faith of the people in the true God (the God-whose-passion-is-the-observance-of-the-law) and inventing a different God (the God-whose-passion-is-compassion).”
— Fr Peter McVerry, SJ, page 34 of his book ‘Jesus: Social Revolutionary?’, Veritas Publications, Dublin, 2008
“In Jesus of Nazareth, the powerless God appeared among us to unmask the illusion of power, to disarm the prince of darkness who rules the world, and to bring the divided human race to a new unity.”
— Henri Nouwen
“Jesus came to heal human nature and bring it back to its original purpose.”
— Sermon from a Carmelite priest, Berkeley Road, Dublin
“I believe that Jesus came to tell us only one thing: who God is…. He knew God intimately as Son of God and he came to reveal that God to us—God’s yearning, God’s desire, God’s passion.”
— Fr Peter McVerry, SJ, page 25 of his book ‘Jesus: Social Revolutionary?’, Veritas Publications, Dublin, 2008
“Jesus came to share his identity with you and to tell you that you are the beloved sons and daughters of God. Just for a moment try to enter this enormous mystery, that you, like Jesus, are the beloved daughter or the beloved son of God. This is the truth. Furthermore, your belovedness preceded your birth. You were the beloved before your father, mother, brother, sister, or church loved you or hurt you. You are the beloved because you belong to God from all eternity.”
— Henri Nouwen
“(The Transfiguration)… a moment of light and life—for Jesus AND for Peter, James, and John. He and they were transformed. They realised who he was: the answer to the hopes of centuries: the Messiah. Jesus too at that moment knew his purpose in life.
This Gospel challenges each of us to face the question, ‘what’s the purpose of my life? Where’s my life headed? What am I doing with the opportunities and talents and blessings God has given to me?’ Whatever the answer—be happy, help others, look after my family, enjoy friendships, love and be loved—they’re all good and worthwhile answers, but to be full of ‘light and life’ God’s purpose for each of us is the same: to come to Know, Love, and Serve Him.
That’s all that matters in the end. It’s the one purpose that’ll give our lives hope, energy, joy and an answer to ‘what is the purpose of my life?’
— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM, Sermon on the Transfiguration, 5th March 2012
“He sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be his very own and would have no ambition except to do good.”
— St Paul, in his letter to Titus (2:11-14)(as in the Christmas Eve/Day Night Mass leaflet 2013, Jerusalem version of the Scripture)
“As the source of love, God desires to make himself known; and the knowledge which the human being has of God perfects all that the human mind can know of the meaning of life.”
— Pope John-Paul II (in his Fides et Ratio encyclical, 1998)
“Christ came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life he has… Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”
— CS Lewis
“That Jesus’ task “is consummated” must be true, because he says so (John 19:30). Yet what a spectacle of failure! His word rejected, his message misunderstood, his commands ignored. None the less, his appointed task is accomplished, through obedience to the death—that obedience whose purity counterbalances the sins of a world. That Jesus delivered his message is what counts—not the world’s reaction; and once proclaimed, that message can never be silenced, but will knock on men’s hearts to the last day.”
― Romano Guardini in his book ‘The Lord’ (as documented on the goodreads website [I want to confirm this myself by buying this book sometime soon] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/284475.Romano_Guardini downloaded 7th January 2020)
“Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns, so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.”
— Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel 1:38
“The Heart of Christ is so immense that it wishes to involve us all in his revolution of tenderness.”
— Pope Francis, 28 June 2019, at the 175th anniversary of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network https://www.popesprayer.va/2019-28-june-speech-of-the-holy-father-pope-francis/ (downloaded 18th Feb 2020)
help with the tough questions 